Yassine Bouhara, a former UBS executive who co-led the bank's equities team at the time of its 2011 rogue trading scandal, is to set up a brokerage and advisory business focusing on Africa.

Bouhara, who was never accused of any wrongdoing during the Kweku Adoboli scandal, wants to hire over 30 staff and open offices in Paris, Dubai, and Algiers, with plans for a London office also in the pipeline, he told Financial News. The venture will primarily focus on brokerage and advisory services in French-speaking Africa, with plans to branch into asset management and private equity.

A name for the firm has yet to be finalised but Swiss-Algerian Bouhara is aiming to launch in early June and already has a couple of advisory mandates. He said wanted to bring a number of ‘senior partners’ on board for the project, and hoped to launch a brokerage in Algiers focusing on domestic securities.

Algeria’s economy remains heavily reliant on oil, and has one of the world’s smallest stock exchanges, with just six listed firms, according to data from the Algiers Stock Exchange website. But the country has one of the world’s largest foreign currency reserves and President Abdelaziz Bouteflika this week announced plans to attract investment.

Bouhara's new venture follows Bob Diamond’s Atlas Merchant Capital, which via its Africa-focused Atlas Mara vehicle raised £200 million on the London Stock Exchange in December. Diamond has teamed up with Ashish Thakkar, a UK-Ugandan entrepreneur, and is searching for a financial services acquisition in the region.

Bouhara, who was set to move to a newly-created role as chief executive of emerging markets at UBS before his departure, resigned from UBS in October 2011 alongside fellow global co-head of equities Francois Gouws. The departure came a month after the Swiss bank announced that Adoboli, a trader within its investment bank, had racked up $2.3 billion in losses through unauthorised trades. Gouws, who was also never accused of wrongdoing, is now chief executive officer of PSG Konsult, a South African wealth management firm based in Cape Town.

During Adoboli’s trial in 2012, Adoboli alleged that Bouhara had told him "you don't know that you have pushed the boundaries hard enough until you've had a slap on the back of the wrists". Adoboli was eventually sentenced to seven years in prison with the City of London Police describing the scandal as "the UK's biggest fraud, committed by one of the most sophisticated fraudsters the City of London Police has ever come across".